vt200 terminals

[BINDE at RU-BLUE.ARPA]

The following appeared on INFO-TERMS at MIT-MC this summer:

 8-Jul-84 22:22:22-EDT,2339;000000000000
Return-Path: <@MIT-MC:OC.GARLAND at CU20B>
Received: from MIT-MC by RUTGERS.ARPA with TCP; 8 Jul 84 22:22:15 EDT
Received: from CU20B by CUCS20 with DECnet; 8 Jul 84 22:15:25 EDT
Date: Sun 8 Jul 84 22:15:02-EDT
From: Richard Garland <OC.GARLAND%CU20B at COLUMBIA-20.ARPA>
Subject: VT240 update
To: JMSK at MIT-MC.ARPA, IRA at WASHINGTON.ARPA
cc: Info-Terms at MIT-MC.ARPA, OC.GARLAND%CU20B at COLUMBIA-20.ARPA

Some months ago I inquired about some problems with some then new VT241's.

Here the story now:

	The inability to use the full screen in REGIS mode was my fault -
or maybe the documentation's fault.  I was doing some scaling and the firm-
ware did some rounding.  The VT125 documentation warns of this.  Generally
the VT125 manual is better than the VT240 manuals.

Problems:

	Tektronix mode only writes 71 (not 72) characters across the screen
and the 72nd always wraps to the next line.  This breaks a lot of programs.
At DECUS the DEC terminal man said they knew of this and would fix it.  
Tektronix mode isn't my favortie but there is a ton of software for it and
we need it to be right.

	Character writeing is slow.  Maybe faster than the VT125 but slow.

	Graphics drawing and erasing is slow.  Slower than the VT125 I'm
sure.

	REGIS firmware bugs - we've noticed bugs such that sequences like
Draw A to B, erase B to A  will fail depending on speed or whether you
follow the erase by another draw.  Definite problems here.  Other erase 
failures depending on angle of line.   We can work around these by fudging
the regis programming.

	4 colors is 3 colors is not enough.  (the background counts as
1).  I would have thought with the price of memory (especially SLOW stuff
they must use) they could have used 8 colors.

	Why on earth can't they get 480 vertical resolution in this day and
age.  The color tube they use is super and with a new product such as this
I can't see why we're stuck with what the VT100 had 5 years ago (240 vertical).

	You can't use ^S and ^Q when the terminal does flow control.  A big
departure from the VT100 and once again shows that those who design these
things don't use them.  

Positives:
	Cheap, reliable, good service.  Printer port can print the graphics
onto a LA50 at the touch of a button (a real win in my opinion).

					Rg
-------



I would also appreciate VT240 information....

Thank you. 
-------